THE BIG GAME

September 5 – October 5, 2014

Storefront Ten Eyck is delighted to present the work of Derek Fordjour and Kate Elliot. These exhibitions emphasize the gallery’s mission to introduce the work of young artists to a larger audience.

Derek Fordjour

Derek Fordjour draws on a variety of sources from American popular culture, including professional sports; board games; carnival and circus artifacts; and arcade, board and card games.

The artist constructs images evocative of the allure, economics, politics and psychosocial implications of games. The work investigates questions of rewards and sanctions, merit and demerit, outcomes, potential and power. Issues of gender, race and class are a recurrent theme, embedded in both the narrative and the material of the artwork’s construction. The subjects are the players, the cheerleaders and the implied audience, which the artist uses to interrogate widely-held cultural norms and societal expectations within American life. Through his deft manipulation of a vocabulary of familiar images, Fordjour offers a broad social critique within the spectacle of sport. The work evokes a sense of loss, suggesting histories, personal and cultural, that are not completely revealed.

Derek Fordjour is an artist working in variety of media, primarily drawing and painting and sculpture. He studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Student’s League in New York City. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and is currently pursuing an MFA in painting at Hunter College in New York City. His work is in several collections throughout the United States and Europe.

Kate Elliot

Kate Elliot makes objects that express the wry, perverse and beautiful moments she encounters in her life. Her practice is an investigation of new ways to see space and material. Growing up in Manhattan and living in the city, Elliot came to question how we inhabit and form relationships to our surroundings and how the materials of the built environment and the natural world inscribe our sensibilities. The artist examines the condition of being embedded in the city through work that illuminates the complexity of her experience. Elliot incorporates materials found in lived spaces. Often, they are the domestic and industrial debris of a consumer-driven culture. Her work is a continual evolution of production, response and use.

Kate Elliot is a native New Yorker currently living in Brooklyn. She received her BFA in interdisciplinary art from SUNY Purchase in 2004. In 2015 she will complete her MFA in sculpture from Hunter College. She has participated in residencies and fellowships at the Triangle Artist Workshop, SUNY Purchase and the Fabric Workshop and Museum.